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Birmingham City University is trialling a new entry-level exam qualification in Linux in a bid to prepare students with the Linux skills they will increasingly need in the workplace.

The qualification was created in partnership with organisations from several countries, but led by Birmingham City University’s School of Computing, Telecommunications and Networks (CTN) and the Linux Professional Institute (LPI).

Desktop

“I always recommend users get out there and try some of the various desktops first hand before selecting the one that is right for them,” said Thoughts on Technology blogger Jeff Hoogland. “For me the perfect desktop needs to be customizable, lightweight, and look nice. With all these, the only choice for me is some Enlightenment.”

Kernel Space

Power consumption at Hetzner Online’s data centres jumped by “about a megawatt” in the night from 30 June to 1 July due to a kernel bug which resulted in many Linux systems reaching 100% processor usage in dealing with the leap second added at midnight. The problem is described in an email sent by the web hosting company to customers, asking them to check their systems’ CPU usage and, where necessary, to restart their systems in order to restore processor usage to normal levels.

Graphics Stack

The developer responsible for KMSCON and FBLOG is seeking comments on a proposed design for virtual terminals and multiple seats that relies upon Wayland as a system-wide compositor.

David Herrmann, the developer responsible for this work, has for months been on a quest to kill CONFIG_VT for virtual terminals from the Linux kernel. Having written KMSCON, a DRM-based terminal emulator, he’s planning to write some user-space VT logic similar to what’s in the kernel. He wants to support multiple virtual terminals for each seat. At present, systemd doesn’t differentiate or allow assigning different VTs to different seats nor is there a way of making the kernel VTs multi-seat capable.

Applications

If you use Gnome, Shotwell will be one of your favorite photo viewer. This simple, minimalistic application that has the ability to do all you want is soon going to get a face detection tool, thanks to a developer working on it as his Google Summer of Code Project.

The developer writes, “The next stage of this project, and probably the harder one —and I need to improve this face detection suite to actually see the results, because it would be really sad to integrate this in Shotwell and later find that it is useless.”

There’s a lot of drama right now over the Linux users being banned in Diablo III. A small portion of the Linux Wine community have come forward to say that they have been banned. This happened across a few Linux sites as well as the Diablo III forums. Blizzard’s lead community manager, Bashiok, came forward saying that all the bans were legit and the only people being banned were cheaters.

Last August I wrote about another Unigine-based game being developed, which at the time didn’t have an announced title and details were scarce. In recent weeks, more information on this Unigine title — which will have a native Linux client — has been released and it’s called Tryst.

Tryst is the “Unigine unannounced RTS” that is under development out of the BlueGiant Interactive studio based in India. The name was pointed out in the forums a few weeks back. Tryst is being advertised a real-time strategy game for Windows, but the developers have confirmed there will be Linux and Mac OS X clients. However, the Linux/OSX clients aren’t expected on release day.

Desktop Environments

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

Activities are the defining feature of the KDE 4 release series. Super-charged virtual workspaces, each of which can also contain its own virtual workspaces, Activities are by far the easiest way to increase the available desktop space, and to work with a task-oriented rather than an application-oriented approach.

Will Schroeder is the CEO of Kitware Inc., a company that builds open source scientific software that also depends on open source. He suggested that open source is the most effective way to get things done through agile, collaborative innovation.

Traditionally science was open, critically reviewed and widely available. Results were shared and new innovations could build on previous discoveries. It is now largely closed and restricted by patents.

Gamepad API support has finally landed in Gnome. A week ago, we reported that Gamepad API was being developed in Gnome which will please Linux gamers a lot. The good news is development is finished and it’s almost ready for use.

Zan Dobersek, the developer says that the Gamepad API for Gtk has landed in WebKit, and though its currently disabled at compile time, impatient users can build it on their own. He adds that this situation may change in future when experimental features are introduced in WebKitGtk+.

Any geek alive in the 80′s will remember the stalwart Commodore 64, an 8-bit computer that launched in 1982 packing a cool 64 kB of RAM. Yes, we all thought the machine was awesome back in the day, though compared to modern smartphones the original Commodore 64 certainly seems lacking.

This release is codenamed Archimedes which follows the KDE SC 4.8 Series. Among the major changes in this release, the init system has moved to systemd and files have been moved from /lib to /usr/lib.

This release offers a DVD only version. GUI package manager – Appset-qt has been dropped from this release and users will have to use Pacman to install packages. The distro is mainly focused on KDE desktop and many of the standard KDE apps and language packs can be found on the DVD. LibreOffice has been replaced by the awesome Calligra suite and here is a lost of major changes:

4. New applications! I’ve finally decided to get my hands dirty and start writing some apps myself. These include a package selector for the Dream Studio installation image (so you don’t need to install 3d-design, for instance, if you’re just using Dream Studio for audio recording), and a JACK appindicator (easy access to the most basic features of JACK for new users). These will appear in the Dream Studio PPAs in the next couple days and will probably be made defautl with a new Dream Studio installation image sometime in the next couple of weeks.

Red Hat Family

The presentations and videos from Red Hat’s in-house conference provide information on current and forthcoming products from the open source specialist, including version 7 of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Phones

Android

A happy bit of news today from Android developer Jean-Baptiste Queru, the CDMA variant of the Nexus S (more commonly known as the Nexus S 4G) has officially been reinstated as fully supported by the Android Open Source Project (AOSP).

Sub-notebooks/Tablets

Google announced the availability of Nexus 7 outside the US, mainly in the English speaking markets such as UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Google also enhanced its content portfolio on Google Play Store and added movies, magazines and TV shows categories.

It was believed that Google eventually bring such content to Android users outside the US. We are sorry to break your hearts. Due to copyright issues, even if Nexus 7 will be available outside the US, you won’t be able to access movies, music, TV shows and magazines via Google Play if you are not living in the US, reports The Inquirer.

Back in February of this year we heard about security firm AlienVault’s creation of the OSSIM standard open source SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) information base.

Described (arguably) somewhat hopefully by its makers as a new “de facto” standard mechanism for sharing cyber threat intelligence, the AlienVault Open Threat Exchange (OTX) system is free to all users of OSSIM (and the firm’s own customers) as it aggregates, validates and publishes threat data.

An open source DNS name server that supports DNSSEC and is designed to be authoritative has been released by EURid, the European Registry of Internet Domain Names. YADIFA is intended to be a lightweight alternative to more established projects; the developers say it was “built from scratch to face today’s DNS challenges, with no compromise on security, speed and stability”.

When I first came across open source software I was amazed. I could hardly believe that good quality software could be made available for a minimal cost. Sure there could be issues with support and maintenance from time to time, but the flexibility and pure value for money equation was hard to beat.

The UK Department of Education has confirmed that information and communications technology (ICT) lessons that teach children how to use Microsoft Word and PowerPoint will soon be more open.

Starting September 2012, computer teachers will be given “the freedom and flexibility to design an ICT curriculum that is best for their pupils,” says Michael Gove, Department of Education secretary. This means teachers can change the curriculum to teach open source if they prefer.

Google’s canning their engineering efforts in Atlanta, Georgia this month. Their engineering staff is moving on, but as one last effort, they were allowed to open-source portions of their last project: Collide.

Web Browsers

Mozilla

Mucker Lab, one of the newest startup/accelerator programs based in Los Angeles announced yesterday they will be partnering with Mozilla’s WebFWD to create a joint acceleration program aimed at at open-source ventures. The companies hope to help the Los Angeles area open-source community turn projects and ideas into viable businesses through the resources of both Mucker Lab and Mozilla.

Choice, as they say, is a good thing. Or you can never have too choices. In the mobile device operating system space, there are plenty to choose from, with Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android leading the pack.

Not to be left out, the Mozilla Foundation, publishers of the popular, open source Firefox Web browser, plans to add one more mobile OS to the mix.

SaaS

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

The Document Foundation is planning to release LibreOffice, the free software office suite, for Android devices. A good amount of work has been done on the app and here we bring the latest screenshots of how this app will look like.

Project Releases

The developers of the open source Tomahawk media player have announced the release of Tomahawk 0.5 and a new version of the accompanying Toma.hk online service. Tomahawk is an open source music player that includes sharing functionality and is designed to be source-independent. New features in Tomahawk 0.5 include a new grid view for albums, and redesigned artist and track pages. The new version can also bi-directional sync playlists with Spotify and Last.fm. New media key controls have been added for Windows and Linux.

Analyzing one of American corporate history’s greatest mysteries—the lost decade of Microsoft—two-time George Polk Award winner (and V.F.’s newest contributing editor) Kurt Eichenwald traces the “astonishingly foolish management decisions” at the company that “could serve as a business-school case study on the pitfalls of success.” Relying on dozens of interviews and internal corporate records—including e-mails between executives at the company’s highest ranks—Eichenwald offers an unprecedented view of life inside Microsoft during the reign of its current chief executive, Steve Ballmer, in the August issue. Today, a single Apple product—the iPhone—generates more revenue than all of Microsoft’s wares combined.

Security

Chrome version 20 represents a major step forward for the security of the Google browser, at least for Linux users, for whom this has often been a somewhat neglected area. It introduces a new sandbox concept which precisely regulates and filters the system calls a process is able to make.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

Gasland director Josh Fox released a short film last month targeting the Democratic governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, for his plan to open economically distressed parts of the state to hydraulic fracturing or “fracking.” The 18-minute film skewers Cuomo for his plans and exposes oil and gas industry internal documents which detail that some of corporations also have concerns about well safety and water contamination.

Finance

Banking regulators released public portions of “living wills” submitted by nine of the world’s largest banks, which details how they could be dissolved if trouble strikes.

The documents, required as part of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, mark an effort to ensure that huge financial institutions, if struggling to stay afloat, can be safely wound down without posing a threat to the overall financial system.

The Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) posted the public portions of the plans online, saying they had not been reviewed or edited by the regulators.

Censorship

Along with ridiculous libel cases, the UK is also infamous for laws that are designed to stop people hurting the feelings of others. Maybe that’s a laudable aim, but the end-result is that they can cast a chill over freedom of speech

Civil Rights

The US Department of Justice (DoJ) tried to hack by legal means into my social media accounts without my knowledge. But they were exposed by Twitter’s legal team who manged to unseal the DoJ’s secret document and give me a chance to defend in court my personal information from being used in a dragnet for the first serious attacks on WikiLeaks’ supporters and volunteers. I still am not sure why they chose to take the risk of going after a member of Iceland’s parliament, because it has caused distress among fellow parliamentarians from around the world. As a result of the speaker of the Icelandic parliament raising the issue at the International Parliamentarian Union (IPU), I was asked to appear for the human rights committee at the IPU to explain the details of my case. A resolution on my case was put forward and adopted unanimously by the IPU’s governing council, in October 2011.

Copyrights

ACTA

On October 23, 2007, the U.S., E.U., Canada, and a handful of other countries announced plans to the negotiate the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. The behind-the-scenes discussions had apparently been ongoing for several years, leading some countries to believe that a full agreement could be concluded within a year to coincide with the end of the Bush administration. Few paid much attention as the agreement itself was shrouded in secrecy. ACTA details slowly began to emerge, however, including revelations that lobby groups had been granted preferential access, the location of various meetings, and troubling details about the agreement itself.

Today’s overwhelming defeat of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) by the European Parliament could have a resounding effect on the treaty’s prospects for survival, according to sources. Meanwhile, public interest groups are celebrating and copyright holders fuming.

Today at 12:56, the European Parliament decided whether ACTA would be ultimately rejected or whether it would drag on into uncertainty. In a crushing 478-to-39 vote, the Parliament decided to reject ACTA once and for all. This means that the deceptive treaty is now dead globally.

The European Parliament rejected ACTA1 by a huge majority, killing it for good. This is a major victory for the multitude of connected citizens and organizations who worked hard for years, but also a great hope on a global scale for a better democracy. On the ruins of ACTA, we must now build a positive copyright reform2, taking into account our rights instead of attacking them. The ACTA victory must resonate as a wake up call for lawmakers: Fundamental freedoms as well as the free and open Internet must prevail over private interests.

Happy Independence Day. The day when Europeans stood up for their own freedom from the US corporate interests. The day when ACTA — the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement — proposed by the US corporations was defeated on the European soil.

ATCA was the ‘international’ edition of SOPA/PIPA which was defeated within the US by huge protest from public and organizations like Google and Wikipedia.

SOPA/PIPA’s cousin ACTA has been rejected by the European Parliament, by an almost unanimous margin of 478 votes against to 39 in favor. 165 members abstained from the vote. In a nutshell, “with 682 MEPs ACTA was supported by 5.7%, rejected by 70% of MEPs,” posts Jan Wilderboer on Google+.

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The lunacy of the EPO with its patent maximalism will likely go unchecked (and uncorrected) if Battistelli gets his way and turns the EPO into another SIPO (Croatian in the human rights sense and Chinese in the quality sense)

Another long installment in a multi-part series about UPC at times of post-truth Battistelli-led EPO, which pays the media to repeat the lies and pretend that the UPC is inevitable so as to compel politicians to welcome it regardless of desirability and practicability

Implementing yet more of his terrible ideas and so-called 'reforms', Battistelli seems to be racing to the bottom of everything (patent quality, staff experience, labour rights, working conditions, access to justice etc.)

"Good for trolls" is a good way to sum up the Unitary Patent, which would give litigators plenty of business (defendants and plaintiffs, plus commissions on high claims of damages) if it ever became a reality

Microsoft's continued fascination with and participation in the effort to undermine Alice so as to make software patents, which the company uses to blackmail GNU/Linux vendors, widely acceptable and applicable again